Provincial Changes to the Issuance of High School Completion Certificates

Background
The Ministry of Education's will no longer issue a school completion certificate for students with special needs who follow modified curriculum and successfully complete all of the goals in their Individual Educational Plan (IEP). Instead, the Ministry is leaving it up to the local school districts to decide if they will issue a school completion certificate or not. Students who graduate from high school after successfully completing the regular curriculum will continue to receive a certificate (known as the Dogwood) from the Ministry of Education.


The Issue
The message sent is that some kids' efforts count and are "worthy" of recognition by the Ministry and others are not. The Ministry claims, in its policy documents, to "value the contributions of all students." This policy change devalues those students efforts. The new policy also seems to fly in the face of the Ministry's policies on inclusion by excluding these students from their credentialing process and leaving up to districts to arbitrarily decide whether or not to issue a certificate.

A further concern is the loss of accountability for these students, since the Ministry will no longer require that districts submit data regarding the graduation of such students to the Ministry.

Petition Statement
The Province of British Columbia School Graduation Certificate is an official and public statement acknowledging the efforts, and personal achievements of students who have proceeded through their public education and successfully completed the curriculum.

The Province of British Columbia School Completion Certificate is an official and public statement acknowledging the efforts, and personal achievements of students who have proceeded through their public education and successfully completed the modified curriculum.

While modified programs often have learning outcomes that differ from provincial graduation requirements, students with disabilities are entitled to have their hard work and accomplishments publicly acknowledged in the same manner as their peers and by the same official body, the Minister of Education, on behalf of the Province of British Columbia.

We request that the Ministry of Education not implement the 2004 Graduation Program Policy which goes into effect in 2007 and instead retains the 1995 Graduation Program Policy which provides guidelines for awarding the British Columbia Certificate of Graduation and the British Columbia School Completion Certificate by the British Columbia Ministry of Education.

(Details of the 1995 and 2004 policies are available at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/policy/policies/student_credentials.htm)